The news of the Kruger January 2012 flood broke on the SANParks forums at 09:07. Wildtuinman, one of the forums longest standing members, started a topic entitled "Is Kruger flooding" . (As the news broke during the day, the title of the topic was changed to "Kruger is flooding".)

20 January 2012: 48 hours after the topic was first posted, it has received 20600 views.

21 January 2012: 7:29 am 23828 views and on page 40.

On 18 January 2012, Nature flexed her muscle; and so did the SANParks' forums. The first pictures published by the very popular News24 website of the floods were taken off the topic on these forums. An indication that the world was watching.

Comments of : 'This is the one place with up to date info on the floods'; 'I cannot stop watching the topic.'; 'This must be the fastest growing thread ever.' were made.

Information on the flooding of the general area was asked for and given. SANParks updated on the situation in Kruger regularly. Through the SANParks forums, an entire forum community came together and supported those in the park as they experienced a frighting time; and supported each other. The might of the SANParks forums!

Those stats show the value of communities such as this one when there is a big story. Want to know what's going on? Go to the source. It's a two sided coin too, as the general public we can see what's happening (in real time in this instance - much faster and more targeted than the general news media), and if utilised correct (as it was) it makes it much easier for those involved to get information out.

It would be interesting to know how many new members there were over the period in question as well. I know I'm one!

Although stated elsewhere I think it is again worth saying a VERY BIG THANK YOU to all mites and SANParks staff who did such a sterling job of keeping us informed and also so impressive that there were no issues or delays with the website itself

Well done to all those involved and I am very relieved to hear that the park is 80% functional and that whilst the damage in Kruger and the surrounds is not insignificant, I am grateful that it is not much worse, and that there were very few injuries is also a testament a job superbly done

I am a member of a local camera club and we meet/have competitions every Thursday.I went last night as usual. A member at the club visited SA and Kruger a few years ago and he really had a fantastic holiday.

Last night I told him what had been happening over the past few days. He asked me how I knew about it and how I was so up to date with the developing events. My answer....... The Forum!

The Forum has been a brilliant way of keeping up with the flood. Probably more so than the news/papers

Orange wrote:It would be interesting to know how many new members there were over the period in question as well. I know I'm one!

43 since the news broke. Welcome! On facebook it's a little more difficult to see, but both the general SANParks and the Kruger park groups had a big influx of members.

Lets add a little statistics for this site (which includes the blog, reservations, etc.).Normally we have around about 20.000 visitors to the site, reading around 165.000 pages, good for around 20 GB of traffic. Which is quite a lot.

Interestingly is to see Facebook. We kept the pages on Facebook updated as much as we could, many photos were placed there by people in and around the park, but only 5540 pages were read directly from there.So it would seem that most of the visitors went straight to this site to find out what was up.

Not posting much here anymore, but the photo's you can follow here There is plenty there.

Feel free to use any of these additional letters to correct the spelling of words found in the above post: a-e-t-n-d-i-o-s-m-l-u-y-h-c